Feb 4, 2008
Why I’m supporting Obama
I promised myself that I would share with you, my readers… all two of you, why I am supporting Obama for President of the United States. I wanted to do so without simply repeating the messages his communications staff is spitting out (they have a short amount of time to give out a quick message). So this morning I read novelist Michael Chabon’s piece in the Washington Post about why it is that Obama is more electable than the other Democratic candidates and he touched on some of the exact same reasons that I am a supporter.
…and I am also lazy, just to be honest.
If there were less at stake, if our democracy had not been permitted, indeed encouraged, to sink to its present degraded and embattled condition not only by the present administration but by a fair number of those people now seeking to head up the next one, perhaps then we could afford to waste our votes on the candidate who knows best how to jigger, to manipulate and to conform to the vapid specifications of the debased electoral process it has been our unhappy fate to construct for ourselves.
He goes on to point out that we… you and I (dear American readers) are responsible for the “phobocracy” we live in… not George Bush and his corporate cronies. We have the power to change our thinking, not just our politicians…
To support Obama, we must permit ourselves to feel hope, to acknowledge the possibility that we can aspire as a nation to be more than merely secure or predominant. We must allow ourselves to believe in Obama, not blindly or unquestioningly as we might believe in some demagogue or figurehead but as we believe in the comfort we take in our families, in the pleasure of good company, in the blessings of peace and liberty, in any thing that requires us to put our trust in the best part of ourselves and others. That kind of belief is a revolutionary act. It holds the power, in time, to overturn and repair all the damage that our fear has driven us to inflict on ourselves and the world.
I have given my money, and I will be giving my vote to Obama because he is the kind of person who comes around rarely in American politics. One who can inspire, repair, and move our nation. This is the kind of leader who translates across all politics, all classes, all peoples.
I like the way my wife puts it, “I’ve never had the opportunity to vote for someone with joy before now.”